After losing the presidential election in 1960,
Richard Nixon suffered with a lot of regrets. He
had lost an election which he could easily have
won if he had not made any one of many errors he
made during the campaign.
So Nixon lost the $100,000 a year job as President
of the United States. He had to take a job with
a California law firm that paid a million or so
a year. This was in 1960, when a million a year
was more like ten million today. And Richard Nixon
was not a rich man.
Despite the fact that he made ten times as much
as he would have if he had won the 1960 election,
nobody has any real difficulty understanding why
Nixon was so upset at losing the lower-paying job.
A million a year as a lawyer does not compare to
$100,000 a year as President of the United States.
Yet you hear people who are trying to sound like
Hardened, Practical Men (the world's dumbest collection
of people) saying, "Well, it's all about money."
Money is like water. If you have plenty of it,
you forget it exists. But if you're poor or thirsty,
money or water is your universe.
It was routine for me in Washington to listen to
some guy whose private sector income had been a
million or so complaining about losing an appointment
as Deputy Assistant Undersecretary in some executive
department. The appointment he didn't get paid a
hundred grand or so, max.
They had money. They wanted power.
No, in Washington it's not all about money. New
York is about money, DC is about power. When you
can buy all the swimming pools you want, power becomes
more important to you.
When you have money, you want power. That is one
of several reasons that the Bill Gates' and the
Martha Stewarts' are so often leftist. Martha Stewart
lately blamed all her problems on the "vast right-wing
conspiracy."
Bill Gates' father recently fought any reduction
in the inheritance tax. It was a routine part of
his lifelong liberalism.
Money means a lot more to the average American
than it does to the billionaires. Bill Gates was
worth $120 billion when the NASDAQ was hitting 6000,
and he was worth $43 billion at last report.
I don't usually share any information about my
personal finances, but I have to admit something
here. If I had just lost $77 billion I would be
in very bad shape. Yet no one expects Gates to jump
out of any tall buildings.
So at the cocktail parties that are so important
to Bush or Media Opinion, money is a lowly thing.
Lots of Europeans and other pinheads are moaning
that America is planning to invade Iraq for the
oil. That's supposed to be Evil.
But as I pointed out on August 24, 2002, The
Only Moral Justification For War Today Is Oil.
Actually the last thing Bush is going into Iraq
for is to break the world monopoly on oil production
set up by OPEC. It hurts the average American, but
it makes no difference to Bush.
All the people whose opinions matter to the circles
Bush travels in couldn't care less about how much
a family has to pay for gasoline and all petroleum
by-products that drive up the average cost of living.
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